Geography: East Midlands, Nottinghamshire. Part of the Nottingham council area.

Main population centres: Nottingham, Clifton.

Profile: The most varied and politically competitive of the three Nottingham seats. Nottingham South contains the city centre of Nottingham and some deprived and troubled residential areas nearby, such as the The Meadows estate. To the west it covers the far leafier and more desirable Wollaton area of Nottingham, an affluent residential suburb set around Wollaton park. Further south on the other side of the Trent is the large post-war council estate of Clifton, although much of it is now privately owned through the right-to-buy. The seat contains the main campuses of Nottingham University (just south of Wollaton) and the Clifton campus of Nottingham Trent University and as a result has one of the highest proportions of students of any seat in the country.

Politics: The seat was held by the Conservatives in until 1992, but Alan Simpson built up large Labour majorities during the Blair years. In the 2010 election Labour support dropped below 40%, but they managed to cling on thanks to the opposition vote being divided between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. In 2015 the Tory vote stayed much the same, but the Lib Dems collapsed and Labour prospered, changing this from a tight marginal to a relatively comfortable Labour hold.

Current MP

LILIAN GREENWOOD (Labour) Born 1966, Bolton. Educated at Canon Slade School and Cambridge University. Former UNISON official. First elected as MP for Nottingham South in 2010. Shadow Transport Secretary since 2015.

Leave won massively in white working class council estates while Remain won comfortably amongst middle class public sector workers.

Looks like Leave won massively in every ward in Nottingham North while Remain won every ward in Nottingham South (except Clifton North and Clifton South which are South of the River Trent). Looks like Remain also won Nottingham East, and its the massive lead in Nottingham North that allowed Leave to carry the whole city.

There was a similar tale of organisational incompetence by Thangam Debbonaire in a Facebook post the other day. Also from tax expert Richard Murphy on why attempts to involve him in developing Labour’s economic policy came to nothing:

It seems concerns about Corbyn now go far beyond any debate as to whether he has the right policy prescription, or whether he’s too left wing to win over the country. It’s now about his fundemental ability to do the job, and indeed the fact that his leadership team have yet to come up with a coherent policy prescription. This from the article linked to above perfectly encapsulates the concerns of many:

“The impression left is that they have created a movement that hates what’s happening in the world and can get really angry about it, but then has not a clue what to do about it”.

You beat me to it Jack Sheldon. It all makes me wonder why the left are still so wedded to Corbyn the man. If they feel they have the numbers among the Labour electorate then why don’t they find someone who pretty much shares his worldview, but at least could be trained in organisational competence, and put them forward as an alternative?

I don’t see what they have to gain by persisting with Corbyn with the risk that following his catastrophic defeat the party would shift back to the right again.

If you are talking about an alternative Momentum candidate I guess the problem is that it is unlikely one of them could again get on the ballot. That is why the idea of Jeremy giving way for John McDonnell (who is probably marginally more competent) is a non-starter.

But more generally the policy difference btwn Corbyn and the PLP is remarkably small given the scale of the rift. And the main things on which there are divisions – Trident, air strikes etc. – are things that would split the Labour party under any leader. I would challenge the Corbynites to name more than a handful of policies beyond those things that would be different with Owen Smith as leader.

Another policy might be an United Ireland. A corbyn government would quite likely approve a referendum there despite the Unionist objection and the fact it would almost certainly fail to cause anything but lots of violence.

I don’t think the present rift in Labour is much to do with policy, or even personalities per se. It is more about whether Labour is a top-down or bottom-up movement; whether the party’s leadership and direction is a product of the grassroots or the PLP.

Had the anti-Corbyn plotters simply gathered their 51 signatures and triggered a leadership contest, the backlash from the membership would surely have been much less pronounced.

But the public posturing – co-ordinating their resignations from the shadow cabinet, going on TV every five minutes and calling for Corbyn to resign, holding secret votes of confidence after pouring abuse on him in a PLP meeting (then gleefully sharing the details with journalists outside) – has rubbed many members up the wrong way. It has become increasingly clear that the constitutional method of removing a sitting Labour leader was the rebels’ last resort, and that they hoped they could bully him into resigning and deny the membership their voice.

As someone else wrote recently, Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution states that Labour is a democratic socialist party. Quite a few members of the PLP have always been uncomfortable with the “socialist” part of that, but now it seems that they want to do away with the “democratic” bit as well.

In Nottingham South, I would imagine that the middle class Wollaton and Park areas and ethnic Bridge and Radford areas will have backed Remain while the white working class Clifton will have backed Leave.

FYI- the Nottingham University semester doesn’t end until the 23rd of June so most students will still be around for June the 8th.

This could be a really competitive seat. On current polling the Conservatives would be within one percent of Labour and such a factor could be the difference.

That being said, the University of Nottingham has one of the largest Conservative associations (although those figures are somewhat misleading) and given previous results the student population must be fairly right leaning.

I still follow Lilian Greenwood on twitter having lived in the seat for nearly three years. Constant tweets lately from her about being honoured to serve and bigging up her achievements etc. She must be getting anxious, but not sure how justified she would be in this…she has a massive personal vote in the Labour-leaning areas. Indeed, she could probably only campaign in Clifton and be re-elected. Really not sure this, or indeed Gedling, could be a Tory gain.

Actually this result doesn’t look too bad for the Tories, given that Labour had a sizable Green vote to squeeze (which ended up making the difference). This is a trick Labour won’t be able to pull in 2022, since the Greens pulled out of most of the marginals anyway.

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